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Thoughts on thinking

dcurt.is

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Re: Thoughts on thinking

#91

Post by analog31 »

Something I'm on the fence about, but just trying to figure out from observation, is whether the AI can decide what is worthwhile. It seems like most of the successes of AI that I've seen are cases where someone is tasked with writing something that's not worth reading.

Granted, that happened before AI. The vast majority of text in my in-box, I never read. I developed heuristics for deciding what to ignore. "Stuff that looks like it was probably generated" will probably be a new heuristic. It's subjective for now. One clue is if it seems more literate than the person who wrote it.

Stuff that's written for school falls into that category. It existed for some reason other than being read, such as the hope that the activity of writing conferred some educational benefit. That was a heuristic too -- a rule of thumb for how to teach, that has been broken by AI.

Sure, AI can be used to teach a job skill, which is writing text that's not worth reading. Who wants to be the one who looks the kids in the eye and explain this to them?

On the other hand, I do use Copilot now, where I would have used Stackoverflow in the past.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#92

Post by wcfrobert »

curl-up wrote: post #31

> The fun has been sucked out of the process of creation because nothing I make organically can compete with what AI already produces—or soon will. So the fun, all along, was not in the process of creation itself, but in the fact that the creator could somehow feel superior to others not being able to create? I find this to be a very unhealthy relationship to creativity. My mixer can mix dough better than I can, but…

I think the article is getting at the fact that in a post-AGI world, human skill is a depreciating asset. This is terrifying because we exchange our physical and mental labor for money. Consider this: why would a company hire me if - with enough GPU and capital - they can copy-and-paste 1,000 of AI agents much smarter to do the work?

With AGI, Knowledge workers will be worth less until they are worthless.

While I'm genuinely excited about the scientific progress AGI will bring (e.g. curing all diseases), I really hope there's a place for me in the post-AGI world. Otherwise, like the potters and bakers who can't compete in the market with cold-hard industrial machines, I'll be selling my python code base on Etsy.

No Set Gauge had an excellent blog post about this. Have a read if you want a dash of existential dread for the weekend: https://www.nosetgauge.com/p/capital-agi-and-human-ambition.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#93

Post by largbae »

This feels off, as if thinking were like chess and the game is now solved and over.

What if you could turn your attention to much bigger things than you ever imagined before? What if you could use this new superpower to think more not less, to find ways to amplify your will and contribute to fields that were previously out of your reach?

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#94

Post by sneak »

> This post was written entirely by a human, with no assistance from AI. (Other than spell- and grammar-checking.)

That’s not what “no assistance” means.

I’m not nitpicking, however - I think this is an important point. The very concept of what “done completely by myself” means is shifting.

The LLMs we have today are vastly better than the ones we had before. Soon, they will be even better. The complaint he makes about the intellectual journey being missing might be alleviated by an AI as intellectual sparring partner.

I have a feeling this post basically just aliases to “they can think and act much faster than we can”. Of course it’s not as good, but 60-80% as good, 100x faster, might be net better.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#95

Post by FeteCommuniste »

uludag wrote: post #26

What happens to conversation in this case? When groups of people are trained to use LLMs as a crutch for thinking, what happens when people get together and need to discuss something. I feel like the averageness of the thinking would get compounded so that the conversation as a whole becomes nothing but a staging ground for a prompt. Would an hour long conversation about the intricacies of a system architecture becom…

Eventually the LLMs get plugged directly into our brains and do all our thinking and lip movements for us. We can all be Sam Altman's meatpuppets.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#96

Post by skydhash »

zdragnar wrote: post #46
don_neufeld wrote: post #3

Completely agree. From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive. I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer. Lest you wonder “what does this gu…

Anyone who has learned a second language can tell you that you aren't proficient just by memorizing vocabulary and grammar. Having a conversation and forming sentences on the fly just feels different- either as a different skill or using a different part of the brain. I also don't think the nature of LLMs being a negative crutch is new knowledge per se; when I was in school, calculus class required a graphing calcula…

Same with drawing which is easy to teach, but hard to master because of the coordination between eyes and hand. You can trace a photograph, but that just bypass the whole point and you don’t exercise any of the knowledge.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#97

Post by FeteCommuniste »

perplex wrote: post #15

I don't think LLMs replace thinking, but rather elevate it. When I use an LLM, I’m still doing the intellectual work, but I’m freed from the mechanics of writing. It’s similar to programming in C instead of assembly: I’m operating at a higher level of abstraction, focusing more on what I want to say than how to say it.

When I microwave a frozen meal for dinner, I'm still a chef, but I'm freed from the mechanics of preparing and assembling ingredients to form a dish.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#98

Post by iamwil »

> But it doesn’t really help me know anything new.

Pursue that, since that's what LLMs haven't been helping you with. LLMs haven't really generated new knowledge, though there are hints of it--they have to be directed. There are two or three times when I felt the LLM output was really insightful without being directed.

--

At least for now, I find the stuff I have a lot of domain expertise in, the LLM's output just isn't quite up to snuff. I do a lot of work trying to get it to generate the right things with the right taste, and even using LLMs to generate prompts to feed into other LLMs to write code, and it's just not quite right. Their work just seems...junior.

But for the stuff that I don't really have expertise in, I'm less discerning of the exact output. Even if it is junior, I'm learning from the synthesis of the topic. Since it's usually a means to an end to support the work that I do have expertise in, I don't mind that I didn't do that work.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#99

Post by FeteCommuniste »

bsimpson wrote: post #63

I admittedly don't use AI as much as many others here, but I have noticed that whenever I take the time to write a hopefully-inciteful response in a place like Reddit, I immediately get people trying to dunk on me by accusing me of being an AI bot. It makes me not want to participate in those communities (although to be honest, spending less time commenting online would probably be good for me).

It'a vicious cycle. As AI gets better at writing, more people will rely on it to write for them, and as more AI content gains prominence, more people will tend to ape its style even when they do write something for themselves.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#100

Post by mionhe »

ebiester wrote: post #44
curl-up wrote: post #31

> The fun has been sucked out of the process of creation because nothing I make organically can compete with what AI already produces—or soon will. So the fun, all along, was not in the process of creation itself, but in the fact that the creator could somehow feel superior to others not being able to create? I find this to be a very unhealthy relationship to creativity. My mixer can mix dough better than I can, but…

Let's frame it more generously: The reward is based on being able to contribute something novel to the world - not because nobody else can but because it's another contribution to the world's knowledge.

It sounds as if the reward is primarily monetary in this case.

As some others have commented, you can find rewards that aren't monetary to motivate you, and you can find ways to make your work so unique that people are willing to pay for it.

Technology forces us to use the creative process to more creatively monetize our work.

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